Like People in History by Felice Picano

to explain to me how to "take the ass end of a wave" without killing myself.
    Following about a hundred spills and near drownings, I managed to keep my footing long enough to ride a minor tunnel all the way in, stepping off the board onto a half inch of water and dry sand just as they did—to assorted cheers and jeers.
    That was the signal for us to leave. Judy was already at the car, and I was shocked to see that it was almost sunset. The boys were still on their boards out at the breakers as we drove away.
    "Have fun?" Judy asked, as she dropped us off at the house.
    I'd thought that she'd paid particular attention to me that afternoon, given all the boys she'd been surrounded by. She'd gotten up from her towel to urge me on when I was riding a wave; she'd praised my nerve and resolve when I'd finally succeeded in taking one in.
    "Sure," I said. "What about you? You hardly got wet."
    "I have my own kind of fan," she said enigmatically. "Tomorrow?"
    "Sure," I replied.
    Alistair put a comradely arm about my shoulder as we walked to the house. "Don't get carried away, okay?" he said, as the Vette sent up a sheet of gravel driving away.
    Before I could ask him to explain, we were inside, and Cousin Diana was standing there, holding a hand over the phone receiver.
    "Whenever you find the time, Mr. Dodge."
    Alistair let go of me. "What is it now?" The change in his voice was evident.
    "I want to talk to you about Dario," she said.
    "What about him?"
    "Don't you want to shower and change, honey?" Cousin Diana asked me.
    I took that as a command. Despite the noise of the shower from my rooms at the end of the big house, I could hear them shouting at each other.
     
    That first day seemed to set the pattern for the following weeks. We'd get up, breakfast around the pool, Judy would come by or would phone, and after Alistair had annoyed Inez and played whatever game it was he was playing with Dario, we'd spend the rest of the day away from the house: hanging around Westwood's shopping area—filled with students and teens—or stopping by the Malibu beach house of a once famous German émigré novelist, to visit his two adolescent children, or driving down to Hollywood and Vine and wasting time, or sunning and playing volleyball at Will Rogers State Park with Siggie and Marie-Claude and other friends of Judy's, under tall cliffs at the top of which perched an enormous glass and redwood-roofed structure. I was told Aly Khan had erected it for Rita Hayworth as a honeymoon cottage. To each side and beneath the edifice—now a restaurant— could be seen cannon-emplacement bunkers built high into the cliffs during the last war, now gunlessly guarding the shore from Japanese sneak attacks. More often, we'd end up at Jewel's Box, which I soon realized was the preferred spot because it was farthest from interfering parents.
    Before I'd left, my mother had told me that Alistair was different from the snotty know-it-all little boy he'd been at nine. During my first weeks in Southern California, I had to agree with her assessment. Possibly because he wasn't a stranger, but in his own element, Alistair was far friendlier to me, far easier with me than I had any right to expect. He introduced me to strangers without a hint of that involuntary wince teenagers make and other teens instantly recognize as saying, "I don't like him either, but I have to!"
    Alistair left me and Judy together with no compunction while he went off with the others. He never once put me down or sneered at me. He would quietly and in detail explain who people I'd just met or was about to meet were and what their relationships were. Whenever I did something to show that I too fit in—chugalugging a bottle of beer, taking a strong wave into shore—he'd make sure the others knew of it: "Hey! Did you see that!"
    Which hardly constituted intimacy. Alistair never told me anything in the least bit private, certainly not his hopes and dreams—and he never asked mine, or even